Victim's family faces new set of questions

Investigators unearthed murder victim Chevelle "Chevy" Wheeler early this year from a Calaveras County hillside, where 26 years earlier serial killer Wesley Shermantine buried her.

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By Scott Smith

recordnet.com

By Scott Smith

Posted Dec. 31, 2012 at 12:01 AM

By Scott Smith

Posted Dec. 31, 2012 at 12:01 AM

» Social News

Investigators unearthed murder victim Chevelle "Chevy" Wheeler early this year from a Calaveras County hillside, where 26 years earlier serial killer Wesley Shermantine buried her.

Yet, Paula Wheeler, the 16-year-old's mother, said investigators told her this month that they recovered her daughter's purse and lavender jacket about 30 miles away in San Joaquin County at the bottom of an old ranch well near Linden.

The well on Flood Road is where investigators in February also found broken bones from at least three people and a fetus in addition to a long list of personal items.

The victims are believed to have been disposed of there by Shermantine and his friend Loren Herzog, who together led a drug-fueled murder spree in the 1980s and '90s.

Wheeler said officials intend to return her daughter's jacket and purse.

"We will be getting them back soon," Wheeler said in a letter to The Record sent from Crossville, Tenn., where she lives with her husband, Raymond. "Something we can actually see that she had on that last day."

The touch of solace the Wheelers feel opens new questions in the ongoing recovery effort:

How did Chevy's personal items get into the well, and when will the San Joaquin County Sheriff's Office make public the trove of unearthed clues, possibly providing answers to the relatives of other long-missing people?

Sheriff's investigators are working to recover and return all of the killers' victims and personal items to their relatives, said Deputy Les Garcia, spokesman for San Joaquin County Sheriff Steve Moore. He gave no time line.

Garcia confirmed that some of Chevy's belongings were found in the well, but he declined to say what items they were or speculate how they got there.

"The only person who can truly answer the question ... is Shermantine himself," said Garcia, adding that the well was also full of animal remains, trash, car and washing machine parts.

Shermantine led investigators to the well and burial sites in letters sent from death row at San Quentin State Prison, where he remains today.

Shermantine and Herzog were arrested in 1999 after the murder and disappearance of Cyndi Vanderheiden, 25, of Clements. Shermantine was ultimately convicted of four murders, while Herzog was convicted of three. The bodies of Vanderheiden and Chevy Wheeler were not found until this year.

Herzog's case was overturned on a technicalitywww and, in January, he hanged himself while on parole as Shermantine started revealing where he buried the victims, all along blaming Herzog for the crimes.

Paula Wheeler said by phone that investigators from San Joaquin County this month mailed a folder filled with photos of the personal items retrieved from the Linden well to deputies in her area. On Dec. 12, she and her husband looked through them.

A deputy there asked her mark the items she recognized as belonging to her daughter. She noted the jacket and contents of the purse: wallet, drivers license and compact powder with her daughter's name.

In another photo, Wheeler said she saw a turquoise ring, which she didn't recognize as belonging to her daughter, who had skipped classes at Franklin High School in Stockton on Oct. 7, 1985, with Shermantine and was never seen again.

Rob Dick, a Sacramento bounty hunter involved for years in the search for Shermantine and Herzog's victims, said prosecutors convicted Shermantine, in part, using blood splatters found in a hunting cabin on the Shermantine family's property in Calaveras County.

Dick said Shermantine, at the time age 19, probably found Chevy's things in his red pickup and decided to dispose of them in the well on his drive home to his parents' house in Linden. By then, Shermantine and Herzog had already used the well to dispose of Kimberly Billy, who had vanished in December 1984, and Jo Ann Hobson, who had disappeared in 1985, about one month before Chevy Wheeler's murder.

The remains of Billy, Hobson and another woman who has yet to be identified were also found in the Flood Road well. Shermantine and Herzog are suspected of murdering many more.

The revelation that Wheeler was buried in a separate location from her belongings underscores the need for the FBI to oversee the ongoing recovery effort, said state Sen. Cathleen Galgiani, D-Stockton, who has corresponded with Shermantine and made repeated visits with him in prison.

Several other law enforcement agencies have expressed interest in hopes of finding answers to their missing persons cases, and Shermantine has said that victims were taken from towns throughout the Central Valley.

"I believe from what Wesley has shared this far with me ... that the magnitude of this case is beyond what any one law enforcement agency alone can be expected to handle," Galgiani said.

The FBI in August took Shermantine out of prison to point out other wells and burial places in Linden, which have yet to be excavated. Padilla said he suspects he knows why they're stalling.

"It's totally financially inconvenient for the sheriff or FBI to find any more bodies," Padilla said, estimating the Flood Road excavation cost more than $100,000. "What if it were your son or daughter?"